To the Living among the Dead

Go and seek the flowering blooms
Blossoming round the silent tombs,
While the pale moonlight doth fall
Softly o'er the churchyard wall.

Let only sacred thoughts pervade
Our hearts, while where our friends are laid
We wander, and still the heartache so fierce.
While sorrow our bosom doth keenly pierce.

Softly tread among the dead,
Let them rest in their earthly bed,
While the moon doth hallow the sacred ground,
Softly casting its light around.

Cast away all thoughts of woe.
Let sin and suffering from us go,
And as a mantle clothes us round,
This holy spell wraps us -- deep, profound.

An organ near doth sweetly flow
With sounds, now dulcet, soft, and low,
Now thundering forth its deep applause --
E'en forming a ladder from earth to God.

Oh! beauteous night of calm and peace,
That, from the day's hard toil released
Soft issues, while the zephyr's blow
The star shine on night's brow doth glow.

Then happy they whose thoughts commune
With those who, from the cold grey tomb,
Have upwards fled, and now sublime,
Aloft in heaven, they glorious shine.

Why mourn, then, for the happy dead,
Whose race is run, whose sorrows fled?
But with our purpose nobler planned,
May'st then our life in God command.

So that when earth has passed away,
Our sunset gone, our life now in decay,
Our star, more golden, more divine,
May in heaven's firmament more lustrous shine.

A. M.


Reprinted from The Witness of 16th October 1914